Recommendation 20

In November 2023, the NAO found that the BBC did not yet have a fully developed evaluation plan to assess its progress with implementing Across the UK and to capture the intended benefits. The NAO reported that at this stage of the programme it would have expected the BBC to now have a benefits management strategy and plan in place. Despite this, the BBC lacked a clear timetable for evaluation and had only recently established a budget for its evaluation activity. The NAO report set out that without a robust evaluation framework, the BBC would not be able capture the impact of its work, nor change course if needed.32 We therefore asked how the BBC could be confident that Across the UK worked and was delivering the outputs it intended when the BBC did not have an evaluation framework set up from the beginning. The BBC told us that it had long-term experience of delivering activity related to Across the UK, and of measuring its impact.33